It was Dartmoor who saw the chance. He was the son of a wealthy father,
and perhaps the one man of that medical class to feel equal to the
experiments given up by the old professor.
Physically, Dartmoor was exceptionally favored by nature, possessing
one of the most winning personalities I have ever met, and the face and
figure of a Greek god. And to this was added a mental development that
was almost abnormal in its completeness. I had gone through school with
him, and never saw him studying. He seemed to learn his lessons by a
few glances at the page of a book.
He had courage of a high order, but never had a fight in his life, for
he could make an adversary surrender without a fight. He could win
any girl for sweetheart, or any boy for friend. He had his enemies,
carefully chosen by himself, but when he so decided he would make these
enemies his friends. I had been one.
Shortly after our diplomas were given us, Dartmoor secured legal
possession of the freak, with a history of the case. The history was
simple; its mother, a poor immigrant, had died at its birth, and its
father was unknown.
The professor, a visiting physician of the hospital at the time, had
taken it into his sanitarium and cared for it; but beyond keeping it
alive had not helped it. It was a man that had never been conscious--a
human being born without the five senses.
Dartmoor erected a pavilion on his grounds, installed in it the freak,
together with the apparatus for massage and exercise, and gave himself
up to the study of his charge. He had me around once to witness the
experiments, but I was not enthusiastic.
The creature, who was about as old as Dartmoor and myself, lay in
a reclining posture on the exercising frame, staring vacantly with
wide-open, blue eyes. He was full grown, but with the features of an
infant--pudgy nose and pursed-up lips.
Two hinged levers worked by a crank caught his wrists as they lay
extended over his head, lifted him to a sitting position, and pulled
him forward until his fingers touched his feet. Then back he went, to
be again swung forward. When there had been enough of this, two other
levers lifted him by the ankles and brought his feet over his head,
then dropped them back.
Then there were massaging and vibrating apparatus and a portable
shower-bath to finish him off. All this had been going on since his
infancy, and now he was fairly well developed--about six feet tall,
with the muscles of an athlete.
"Dartmoor," I said, when the job was over, "this is a problem for a
college of physicians and surgeons, not for one man."
"But think of the credit," he answered enthusiastically. "Think of the
world's applause if I succeed in giving consciousness to this poor,
animated clay."
"It may be an idiot."
"Not necessarily--an infant, perhaps."
"Where do you think the trouble lies?"
"I do not know; neither does the professor. It is something that
affects the sensory, motor, and sympathetic nerves as a whole. I
shall try the different absorption treatments, and various forms of
radio-activity and ultra-violet rays. Mental suggestion may do it."
"Well, good luck to you. I've a living to make curing live people."
But I did not make a living by my profession. A girl who had said "yes"
at the beginning of my studies now said "no," and it needed no deep
investigation to discover the reason for the change. She had come under
the sway of Dartmoor's personality, and my cause was hopeless.
What made it harder was that he seemed unaware of it. He evidently
cared nothing for her, busying himself with his experiments and never
seeking her. Otherwise I might have had it out with him.
However, the girl's "no" carried with it a denial of all else that
I valued. I was young, unproven, much wrought up, and utterly
irresponsible. For the next five years my life had better be glossed
over. I went to sea, and found in the wandering life of a sailor the
only relief for the aching drag at my breast.
At last, being more sane than insane, I turned over a new leaf and
began to save money. A few years later I found myself owner and master
of a fine little schooner, and, after a few exploring and trading trips
around the South Sea Islands, came upon a pearl fishery which laid the
foundations of a fortune.
This done, I took in a ballast load of guano, and, ten years from the
time of my departure, sailed for the Golden Gate and home. I wanted to
see that girl again, married or single.
It must have been intuition, for I arrived at San Francisco just before
the date fixed for her marriage to Dartmoor. I saw him first, and it
was he who told me. He was worn out with his unsolved problem, and
about to abandon it.
There had been something lacking in his life, he said--something that
lessened his powers, but now he had found it--the love of woman. He had
awakened to the fact that he loved Miss Ewing, had always loved her,
and was rejoiced to know that she had always loved him.
They were to be married in a week. His living dead man would then take
second place in his thoughts, and perhaps new thoughts would come.
It was sad news for me, but I gritted my teeth and congratulated him.
"You're right," I said grimly. "A few years more of this business and
no woman would have you. You look hunted. Your hair is turning."
"Yes," he sighed, "I'm getting gray and old. Perhaps, as you once said,
it is too much of a task for one man. I have tried every scientific
appliance, but I have not stirred a single sense perception.
"And I am being interfered with. A local society for the prevention of
cruelty to children is getting active. I am charged with inhumanity,
and in danger of arrest at any time. Why, he could not live a week
without the care I am giving him."
"Why not let the society have him? Get him off your mind. Do you expect
your wife to be happy with that monstrosity between you? Give it up,
Dartmoor."
"I cannot. It is my life's work."
"Then you'd better take him down to my island, where I am the law and
the lawmaker. Otherwise your life will be short and your wife a young
widow."
I had made the suggestion at haphazard, but he became interested at
once, asked me all about my pearl fishery, and the gang of coolies who
obeyed me as a king, and said he would think it over. I left him then;
and believing that even as a rejected lover I had a right to see my old
sweetheart once in ten years, I called upon her.
It is hard for a man roughened as I have become to describe that girl;
so I shall not try, except to say that all sense of fair play left me,
and that I had not been in her presence five minutes before I was down
on my knees, begging to be taken back.
I almost gained my point. There were tears in her eyes, and her hand
trembled as I held it. She admitted that Dartmoor's long neglect had
lessened his value in her eyes, now that she had won him. But he had
done nothing culpable; her promise was given, and he seemed fond of
her, and in need of her.
"Confound Dartmoor and his need of you!" I growled. "I need you more.
He has his man-baby and his science. You will be second. You would be
first with me, Ella. Give him up--for me."
She shook her head slowly, and more slowly, while I held tightly to her
little hand. Then the doorbell rang, and we heard Dartmoor's voice.
"Curse him!" I cried hotly. "Ella, I won't have it. I won't give you up
to him. I'm a man now, not a bewildered boy."
He came in before she could reply. He must have seen something out of
the way in our faces, for he said jocularly:
"Talking about me, I'll wager. I wondered what made my ears burn. Do
you know," he said, "that there is a scientific basis for that old
fancy?"
As he took it scientifically and good-humoredly, I let it go; besides,
as I remembered later, my anger had left me.
"Captain," he said seriously, "I have a proposition for you--that you
take me and my phenomenon, with my attendants and apparatus, down to
your island, where, I presume, we will be undisturbed. When I am alone
with him I wish to try some experiments that I have long contemplated,
but which have been interfered with by the people of this city. I will
assume all expenses."
"Come along," I answered graciously. "I won't come within a mile of
you, and the coolies will avoid you both."
"And, Ella," he said, turning to the girl he thought he loved, "it will
necessitate a postponement of our wedding for a while. I cannot take
you down into the South Pacific on an uncertainty. You will not mind, I
know; we have waited long, and can wait a little longer. You agree with
me, do you not, captain?"
"Of course, I do," I answered with a leaping heart, but trying to
appear unconcerned. "It's no place for a woman."
She merely bowed her head and said nothing. What she thought I could
not know. Nor can I remember much of what I thought myself. Mingled
with my joy over the delay, there seemed to be vague imaginings of my
holding Dartmoor by the heels over the taffrail and dropping him into
the water. But I am not sure that these visions did not come later.
Wrong, of course; but I was an angry and jealous man.
I saw her once more before we sailed, but could not move her. She was
kind, gentle with me, and sorrowful, but obedient to the influence of
Dartmoor, with no will but his. So I gave it up for the time, trusting
not to a watery grave to break his influence but to his absence from
her.
We transferred the freak by night and lodged it in the hold, where I
had built a sort of enclosure under the cabin trunk for the apparatus.
Dartmoor brought a couple of his servants along to carry on the daily
exercising, and my Kanaka crew expressed no curiosity concerning the
strange weights they hoisted over the side at midnight. So, we got away
without trouble.
Whether or not Dartmoor exercised any mental influence over me I do
not know. I felt a healthy hatred for him as the man who had taken the
woman I loved, but I could not bring myself to quarrel with him. He
could not force me to like him, but possibly he disarmed my resentment
by his kindly feeling for me.
My island was a small affair, as islands go--merely the top of a
submerged mountain--surrounded by a barrier reef with only one passage
through it; and this entrance was known to no one but myself. Well
up from the beach I had erected huts for my coolie divers and a
comfortable house for myself on the high ground near a spring of water.
Here I purposed to install Dartmoor and the freak; but I wondered,
grimly and ungenerously, as I steered through the dangerous passage and
glanced at a dismantled hulk wrecked on the reef during my absence, as
to the chances of anybody getting off that island without my consent.
As we let go the anchor, a man pulled out in a small dingey I kept for
exploring the lagoon and climbed aboard. He was tall, elderly, and mild
of face and manner.
"Glad to see a white face again," he said as he offered me his hand.
"You are the captain, I believe--the white chief of these poor heathen.
I am Mr. Pfeffer, a seagoing missionary, and my little craft was
wrecked here last week while trying to make the passage in a storm. I
am the only one saved, and I owe my life to your divers. They have been
very kind to me, a shipwrecked wayfarer, and I would like to remain
among them a while, if it is possible for me to do so."
"Stay as long as you like, Mr. Pfeffer," I answered. "Convert us all,
if you like; but there's a critter down below that's proof, I'll
warrant."
He asked questions, and Dartmoor explained. Then the missionary
inspected the monstrosity.
"I consider my shipwreck as an act of God," he said, as he came on
deck. "You will succeed, Mr. Dartmoor, I know you will. And I will be
here, to aid you with prayer and spiritual help. For this new-born
intelligence must be trained to know and believe in the goodness of
God, who creates nothing without a purpose. It is all clear, now,
captain. I have been brought here to assist."
I did not dispute him. Fish, yams, and cocoanuts were plentiful on that
island, and I had other things to think of. An overhauling of the work
done in my absence and a trip to Honolulu for supplies would keep me
busy for some time.
As I was about to start, Dartmoor's two servants asked to be taken with
me. I consulted Dartmoor, and he sadly advised it. They did not like
the quiet life on the island and, though he had offered more pay, they
were not content. I landed them at Honolulu and saw no more of them.
Their going left the manual work of exercising the freak to Dartmoor,
and I grinned shamelessly. At this juncture I had half a mind to run
over to San Francisco and make another appeal to Ella, but gave it up.
She might not have grown away from him yet; and at any rate I could
keep Dartmoor on the island as long as I pleased. To such dark depths
of knavery does jealousy bring a man.
I ran back to the island, and no sooner was the anchor down than
Dartmoor and the dominie appeared on the beach, shouting and
gesticulating like lunatics. Then, over the noise they made, there came
from the house up the hill a sound like the braying of a burro mixed
with the wail of a fog siren. Then I heard Dartmoor.
"It's alive," he called, "and conscious. It can sit up."
"Great Scott," I said. "Then that's its baby wail."